Political Anxiety Survey
“Family, we are living in hard days,” our chaplain, the Rev. Dr. Angulus Wilson, opened his latest chapel message. “It’s mighty difficult, if you’ll be honest, trying to trust God in a world where everything keeps changing.” Wilson’s sage words come off the heels of seismically shifting social and political conditions domestically and around the world. Escalating tensions around immigration enforcement and an increasingly iffy global state of affairs are constantly heralded by push notifications and partisan shouting matches, breaking news banners and bleak briefings. To many of us, the “hard days” Chaplain Wilson describes are characterized by political anxiety, the “stress, worry, or fear individuals experience due to political events, news, or current affairs” (Sherrell, 2024). Interested in how the Wheaton College community experiences these feelings, the Center for Applied Christian Ethics surveyed the student body to break down the issue in our local context.
The questionnaire itself contained a mix of scalar and short-answer items, asking students to self-identify themselves politically (1 = most left-of-center; 5 = most right-of-center), rate their feelings of political anxiety (1–10), assess the general atmosphere of political anxiety in the United States (1–10), and briefly explain the most salient problems and potential solutions. Respondents (n = 160) were spread relatively evenly across grade levels (including graduate students), with approximately three quarters identifying as White/Caucasian and 59% as female (see figures 1–3). The distribution of political identification was roughly normal, while personal political anxiety scores showed a moderately bimodal pattern with a dominant right-side peak. National political anxiety scores, in contrast, were skewed to the left. The means and standard deviations were 2.93 (SD = 1.00), 6.18 (SD = 2.45), and 7.54 (SD = 1.52), respectively (see figures 4–6).
A linear regression analysis was conducted to examine whether political orientation, gender, and race/ethnicity predicted political anxiety. Identifying as left-of-center emerged as a moderate, positive predictor of experiencing such feelings (r = .57, p < .001). Gender was also significantly associated with political anxiety, though the effect was weaker, with females reporting slightly higher levels than males (r = .20, p = .040). Race/ethnicity other than White/Caucasian showed a non-significant, essentially negligible relationship with political anxiety (r = -.07, p = .457). Moreover, respondents perceived, interestingly, that Americans in general feel significantly more politically anxious than they themselves do (M = 7.54 vs. 6.18, p < .001).
The short-answer responses offered a wealth of insight into the particulars of what contributes to political anxiety among Wheaties. To the question, “What makes you most politically anxious?” students generally identified three themes: executive/political power and leadership (~90 responses); polarization, division, and social conflict (~70); and personal vulnerability and fear (~40). Within the leadership category, responses commonly cited Donald Trump, perceived authoritarianism, executive overreach, and lawlessness as primary concerns. Many students also linked their political anxiety to partisanship, divisiveness, and a collective inability to engage in civil dialogue.
Moreover, when asked “What is the biggest problem in politics right now?” terms like “fake news” and “media bias” appeared frequently. Responses tended to reflect feelings of information chaos, perhaps helping to explain why perceptions of the collective political temperature exceeded individual anxiety. National polarization and “Us vs. Them” dynamics were also widely described as defining features of today’s political climate.
Participants were also asked to think about and briefly describe potential solutions to the problems they had previously mentioned. Encouraging dialogue, civility, and depolarization dominated these answers (~30–35% of respondents), followed by proposals of executive accountability or even entire leadership changes (~18–22%). Other prevalent themes included media reform and regulation of the information environment (~15–18%), spiritual renewal (~10–12%), and wholesale political disengagement as a coping strategy (~5–8%).
Some answers in particular well encapsulated general themes and trends. One student wrote, for example, “This is unlikely to happen, but encouraging more education and conversation on disagreeing viewpoints.” This response is a microcosm of the broader pattern of the data and captures several key dynamics at once. For one, the qualifier—that a potential solution is “unlikely to happen”—represents a major trend of skepticism toward the ability of Americans across political aisles to see eye to eye. Many answers like this one described a perceived climate of stifling political partisanship, consistent with the earlier finding that Wheaties rate national political anxiety as higher than their own personal levels. At the same time, the proposed solution of encouraging education and dialogue mirrors the dominant response trend. This sort of tension between pessimism about political reality and optimism around individual reform seems to characterize much of the dataset.
Political events, and especially those that make the world a scarier and more unstable place in a flash, often provoke significant worry. Our data suggest that Wheaties are not immune. Many of us perceive a nation marked by polarization, information chaos, and fragile leadership, and many express that meaningful reform is unlikely. Yet Jesus anticipated the “hard days” Chaplain Wilson described, telling His disciples, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (New International Version, 2011, John 16:33). The soundness of mind afforded to believers by Christ’s work at Calvary allows us to “[have] the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind” (NIV, 2011, Philippians 2:2), even amid political division. With unity as our foundation, the Christian response is not a denial of political reality and our feelings, but a reorientation of our ultimate allegiance to our Lord and Leader. Take heart. Christ has overcome the world—and its politics.
Asa Thurstone
CACE Student Fellow
Sherrell, Z. (2024, September 26). How to manage political anxiety. Medicalnewstoday.com; Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/political-anxiety
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